The di­rec­tor of Cre­atives and Di­as­po­ra at the Cairo-based Africa Ex­port-Im­port Bank (Afrex­im­bank), Temwa Gondwe, says there is po­ten­tial for the fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion to in­vest in film pro­duc­tion, mu­sic, fash­ion and sports in the Caribbean.

Afrex­im­bank, whose re­gion­al head­quar­ters is based in Bar­ba­dos—its first out­side of Africa —was a spon­sor of the 15th edi­tion of Caribbean Fes­ti­val of Arts, CAR­IFES­TA, which end­ed here on Sun­day.

Gondwe told the Caribbean Me­dia Cor­po­ra­tion (CMC) that, hav­ing recog­nised the rel­e­vance and op­por­tu­ni­ties pro­vid­ed by the cre­ative econ­o­my as a key dri­ver for de­vel­op­ment and job cre­ation, Afrex­im­bank es­tab­lished the Cre­ative Africa Nexus pro­gramme (CANEX) to sup­port the de­vel­op­ment of Africa’s cre­ative and cul­tur­al in­dus­tries.

CANEX al­so ad­dress­es some of the chal­lenges faced by this econ­o­my through the pro­vi­sion of ac­cess to fi­nance, ca­pac­i­ty build­ing, trade, in­vest­ment and ex­port pro­mo­tion, ac­cess to new mar­ket op­por­tu­ni­ties, dig­i­tal so­lu­tions, and pol­i­cy ad­vo­ca­cy to fast-track the scal­ing of Africa’s cre­ative sec­tors with­in the glob­al econ­o­my.

“… we take fash­ion de­sign­ers from what we can call glob­al Africa—from Africa, the Caribbean and the wider di­as­po­ra—to places like Por­tu­gal, Paris and New York and oth­er fash­ion weeks. You find that even the Caribbean fash­ion de­sign­ers are hold­ing their own along­side oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al fash­ion de­sign­ers,” Gondwe told CMC.

“So, I would say, if you look at it, film, mu­sic, sports, even gas­tron­o­my, there are key ar­eas that have got a huge up­side po­ten­tial for growth in the Caribbean re­gion.”

He not­ed that sports are big in the Caribbean, mak­ing spe­cif­ic ref­er­ence to crick­et and track and field.

“These are all sub-sec­tors of the cre­ative in­dus­tries that, if well man­aged and well sup­port­ed, have the po­ten­tial to re­al­ly sig­nif­i­cant­ly con­tribute to the re­gion­al econ­o­my.”

Gondwe, how­ev­er, al­so saw op­por­tu­ni­ties for col­lab­o­ra­tion with Africa, not­ing that there is noth­ing that stops a de­sign­er or film pro­duc­er in the Caribbean pro­duc­ing their work in Africa and the Caribbean.

“So be­ing here as part of that and be­ing part of those con­ver­sa­tions is go­ing to en­sure that these sec­tors that, at the mo­ment, are on­ly show­ing po­ten­tial, in due time, will re­al­ly re­alise the gains tan­gi­bly from an eco­nom­ic per­spec­tive,” Gondwe told CMC.

One of the con­cerns for cre­atives in the Caribbean is fund­ing. Gondwe said Afrex­im­bank pro­vides fi­nanc­ing for cre­atives, and that the bank has a two bil­lion US dol­lar fa­cil­i­ty that is tar­get­ed at mu­sic, film and oth­er sub-sec­tors of the cre­ative in­dus­try.

“So those are loans, can be guar­an­tees, ad­vi­so­ry ser­vices and so on,” he said, adding that Afrex­im­bank works with a lot of fi­nan­cial in­ter­me­di­aries to ex­e­cute.

“And those con­ver­sa­tions are al­so be­ing had with fi­nan­cial in­ter­me­di­aries in the Caribbean, be­cause we do know that cre­atives need to ac­cess fund­ing. It’s like hav­ing a seed with­out wa­ter to nour­ish it. So fi­nanc­ing is very im­por­tant.”

Be­yond debt, the bank is pro­vid­ing eq­ui­ty through CANEX Cre­ations In­cor­po­rat­ed, the in­vest­ment part of CANEX.

“… we re­alise that in some cas­es, it might not be debt, it might be they might need eq­ui­ty, might need a bit of in­vest­ment in or­der to push the brand for­ward be­cause most of our busi­ness­es in the cre­ative in­dus­tries are small, most of them are in­for­mal, so the tra­di­tion­al means of sup­port­ing in­dus­try might not ply them­selves in the cre­ative in­dus­tries.”

Gondwe said Afrex­im­bank is look­ing at ways to bank cre­atives, say­ing “grants are not some­thing that we are big on as a bank, but where we do pro­vide some min­i­mal grants.

He said Afrex­im­bank looks at es­tab­lish­ments in the cre­ative in­dus­tries as vi­able com­mer­cial en­ti­ties and their own­ers as en­tre­pre­neurs.

“So, we’re pro­vid­ing so­lu­tions that are tai­lored to en­sure that we’re able to meet the cre­atives at a point where we can help them grow their busi­ness­es, giv­en their lim­i­ta­tions and chal­lenges that they’re fac­ing.”

He said that, for ex­am­ple, Afrex­im­bank would sup­port pre-pro­duc­tion, pro­duc­tion and post-pro­duc­tion of files, pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of fash­ion.

“So, you look at even in some cas­es, fac­tor­ing sup­ply chain fi­nanc­ing and so on. So while look­ing at all these, we look at all these dif­fer­ent types of ap­proach­es to pro­vid­ing fi­nanc­ing, giv­en the pe­cu­liar­i­ties in the cre­ative and cul­tur­al in­dus­tries.”

Gondwe said such part­ner­ships be­tween Africa and the Caribbean are pos­si­ble.

“There’s noth­ing that is re­al­ly stop­ping it. It’s not re­al­ly a ques­tion of lo­gis­tics,” he said even as he ac­knowl­edged the im­por­tance of air and sea links.

“Look, cen­turies ago, we had the slave trade. They crossed the seas, and it was a painful episode in our lives. You fast-for­ward to­day, we sim­ply have no ex­cuse,” Gondwe said, not­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ties pro­vid­ed by mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy.

“You can pro­duce a movie here and a movie in Africa and con­nect it. Col­lab­o­ra­tion can hap­pen in al­most any sec­tor at the mo­ment, whether it’s an­i­ma­tion, whether it’s lit­er­a­ture, whether it’s sports, whether it’s gas­tron­o­my, we can col­lab­o­rate,” Gondwe ex­plained.

He said Afrex­im­bank is us­ing plat­forms such as CAR­IFES­TA, the Africa, Caribbean Trade and In­vest­ment Fo­rum, and the In­ter-African Trade Fair (IATF) to ad­dress the knowl­edge gap.

IATF 2025 is slat­ed to take place in Al­ge­ria from Sep­tem­ber 4 to 10 and is ex­pect­ed to bring to­geth­er over 2,000 ex­hibitors and over 35,000 vis­i­tors.

“It is a huge mar­ket­place for Africa. And this year, for the sec­ond time, at ITF, we al­so have The Glob­al African di­as­po­ra day, where we are fo­cus­ing on the re­la­tion­ship be­tween Africa its di­as­po­ra, in­clud­ing the Caribbean..

“The pri­vate sec­tor here, the cre­atives here, the cre­ators may not know who their coun­ter­parts in Africa are. Sim­i­lar­ly, the cre­atives on the con­ti­nent might not know who their coun­ter­parts in Cari­com are. So to ad­dress this knowl­edge gap, we have plat­forms like the in­tra-African Trade Fair, which brings to­geth­er buy­ers and sell­ers from all over the world in all sec­tors, so that they can con­nect. They can net­work and es­tab­lish busi­ness con­nec­tions,” Gondwe said.

He not­ed that heads of state from the Caribbean and Africa will be speak­ing at the fo­rum.

“There will be a fo­cus on gas­tron­o­my, the food that we share; there will be a fo­cus on our ex­hi­bi­tion, the goods that we’re sell­ing to each oth­er, and there’ll be an op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­pand in­to each oth­er’s mar­kets, be­cause we have brought the dif­fer­ent play­ers from the dif­fer­ent sec­tors un­der one canopy, and en­sur­ing that we deal once and for all with the trade in­for­ma­tion prob­lem,” he told CMC.

(CMC)